Illinois Conservatives Get Another Kick In The Teeth

Hey, Conservatives, are you ready for another kick in the teeth, because here’s Tom Cross’s boot comin’ right at your pearly whites:

Yes, this is a Republican ad.

And this is precisely why I wrote these three articles — here , here and here — explaining my reasons for voting for Pat Quinn for governor.

The reason I’m voting for Quinn has nothing to do with his policies. I’m voting for Quinn because Rauner must lose.

And now I’m voting for Mike Frerichs for State Treasurer because Tom “Double” Cross must lose.

Cross and Rauner must lose because if they don’t, the Democratic wing of the Republican Party will grow. It’s a ravenous beast devouring the squishy, spineless, chestless, tasteless, bootless bodies of conservatives.

Why do you conservatives suppose that Cross and Rauner feel so comfortable kicking conservatives in the teeth? I can think of only two possible reasons: Either they assume they’ll get conservative votes anyway, or they assume they don’t need conservative votes. And maybe they don’t. But why not test those assumptions. Help elect their opponents, which may provide evidence that both assumptions are wrong.

Not voting or voting for an unelectable third party candidate is simply a less effective way to express your opposition to lousy, presumptuous candidates. This time around, make your vote count.

Conservatives in San Diego, including prominent pastor Jim Garlow, published an open letter to San Diego voters proposing this same strategy, which they call “defensive tactical voting.” The letter calls for conservative San Diegans to vote for the Democratic candidate in the 52nd Congressional District because the Republican candidate, Carl DeMaio, is a homosexual activist who hopes to use his position to advance his homosexuality-affirming social and political agenda.

If we keep rewarding Republicans like Cross, Rauner, and Illinois U.S. Senator Mark Kirk with our votes, in two, four, or six years, there will be no party that will fight to protect preborn babies, marriage, the rights of children, or religious liberty. Like a cancer the republic-destroying Leftist social ideology of these men will metastasize within the party.

Have you been buying the snake oil “moderate” Republicans have been selling, claiming it will save the Republican Party and the Republic? You know, the magical social issues “truce” potion that will heal all our wounds?

Well, will someone (perhaps Mitch Daniels) answer these questions: Are Tom Cross, Bruce Rauner, and Mark Kirk participating in this truce? What about Rob Portman, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Charlie Dent, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen? And what about the Democrats?

Perhaps Mitch Daniels doesn’t know that a truce calls for a cessation of activity from all involved parties. When only one faction ceases activity, it’s called a surrender.

But perhaps the footmen, a bit bruised and battered, will at long last stand upright and throw down their little white gauntlets.

Faced with two bad candidates, voters choose the lesser of evil, but discerning which is the lesser evil has become more difficult. Which issues do voters think more essential to the flourishing of this state and this constitutional republic: killing babies or protecting them? Fighting to restore marriage or dismantling marriage? A robust economy or robust religious liberty?

“Moderate” Republicans stare obsessively through a tiny peephole that permits only a distorted, false vision of a sunny future for America if only we can get those darn job, pension, and debt problems fixed. Meanwhile, just outside the sliver of a picture the peephole permits, the vast American horizon is darkening, threatened by a public that thinks killing its young, dismantling marriage, and deracinating religious liberty are non-essential incidentals with little bearing on the health of America.

C’mon, Conservatives, snap out of it. Vote for Frerichs and Quinn. Unless conservatives do something en masse and radical, Republicans like Cross, Rauner, and Kirk will reshape the Grand Old Party into the jejune Periwinkle Party.

Author

Laurie Higgins has worked as the Cultural Analyst for the Illinois Family Institute (IllinoisFamily.org) since the fall of 2008. Prior to that, she worked full-time in the writing center of a suburban Chicago high school, where all four of her children attended. She is currently working on bulking up her stick arms by dead-lifting her five grandchildren--one at a time, of course.

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